With the ballad dances of the Faroes it is interesting to compare the ballad dances of the Ukraine and also the choral dances of a community so far removed as the Torres Straits. Of these latter Dr Haddon writes[15]:
The dancing-ground was an oblong space.... The drummer with the singers generally struck up a song, but sometimes the dancers sang a refrain or called for a song by name. Each song seemed to be associated with its own particular dance and to be accompanied by some story or incident which was illustrated by the movements of the dancers.
A much closer parallel, however, is furnished by the Ҳороводъ or choral dance of Little Russia. The Ҳороводъ, according to the account of an eye witness[16], is not only a song sung to the accompaniment of a dance; but the song is narrative in form and answers in all respects to the ballad of North Western Europe. The dancers join hands and dance in a circle from west to east, in a contrary direction to the sun's movements—withershins as the Scots peasants have it. Then, because it is considered unlucky to do anything withershins, in the refrain the motion is reversed and the dancers pass from east to west, to counteract the baleful effects of the first direction. Here too, however, it is interesting to note, the dance is sometimes stationary.
III. Into the rise of the ballads on the Faroes and their exact relation of form and content to the Icelandic Fornkvæði[17], and to the Viser of Norway[18], Sweden[19], and above all of Denmark[20], it is impossible to enter here. Perhaps the relationship between the ballads of the various countries of the North will never be fully understood. The ramifications are too many and too complex, while too many links in the chain have already been lost in the "scrubby paper books" such as that with which Bishop Percy found the housemaid lighting the parlour fire. And those who would too hastily dogmatise on the 'conveyance', translation, and borrowing of the various versions receive a wholesome warning from Dr Axel Olrik's analysis[21] of the ancestry and parallel versions of the Scots, Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish forms of the ballads of Earl Brand (Dan. Riboldsvisen). Moreover it is no easier to generalise about the sources of the Faroese ballad material than about the Danish. The motif of the Faroese Tristrams Táttur, also found in the Icelandic ballad of Tristram comes ultimately (through the Tristram's Saga one would suppose) from a French romance; that of Nornagest, changed though it is in form, is surely founded on the Icelandic Saga; Olufu Kvæði comes no doubt from a Spanish story; and the motif of the Scots ballad of Binnorie is "found also among the people of Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Faroes[22]."
It would be pleasant to develop a theory that the purveyors of ballad material were the sailors and merchants who plied up and down the great trade routes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, or even earlier. It has been suggested by Professor Ker[23] and others that Shetland may have been "the chief meeting-place or trading station between the ballads of Scotland and Norway." The Shetland ballad of Sir Orfeo actually has a refrain in Norn, the Norse dialect spoken in Shetland and the small neighbouring islands till the eighteenth century; while the ballad of Hildina taken down by Low[24] on the Island of Foula off Shetland (cf. p. 217 below) is entirely composed in Norn. Indeed we know from Low's account[25] that many ballads and songs must have perished with the language:
Nothing remains but a few names of things and two or three remnants of songs which one old man can repeat;
and further on he continues:
Most of the fragments they have are old historical ballads and romances.... William Henry, a farmer in Guttorm in Foula has the most knowledge of any I found; he spoke of three kinds of poetry used in Norn, and repeated or sung by the old men; the Ballad (or Romance, I suppose); the Vysie or vyse, now commonly sung to dancers[26]; and the simple song.... Most of all their tales are relative to the history of Norway; they seem to know little of the rest of Europe but by names; Norwegian transactions they have at their fingers' ends.
One would like to have known more about Norn and its 'Vysies,' which might have formed an interesting and instructive link between some of the Northern ballads. On the other hand, the Scandinavian colonies in Ireland, and settlers in English ports such as Bristol, may have done not a little, through their trade with France and the Mediterranean countries, to spread the new rhyming four line verse and the romantic stories of southern and eastern Europe[27].
While this obscurity remains as to the connection between the Faroese ballads and those of neighbouring countries, notably Denmark, the questions of the age and origin of many of the Faroese ballads in their present form are also frought with difficulty. Of the Danish ballads, which sometimes offer parallels so close as to suggest translation from one language to the other, the first MS. collection that can be dated with certainty was written down in 1550. But there is much evidence, both internal and external, for assigning a much earlier date to the historical ballads at least. It has been suggested by Olrik[28], who supports his view by arguments which it would be extremely difficult to contest, that many of the historical ballads are practically contemporaneous with the events which they describe, and some of these took place in the thirteenth century, while others, e.g. Riboldsvisen, are possibly of the twelfth century.